February 07, 2017

Sally Yates' 15 Minutes of Fame

An observation about politicians and others in the public eye: Sometimes, the opportunity to be in the limelight, to stroke your massive ego and sense of self-worth, and possibly to impress your colleagues, overwhelms rational thinking and the very real threat of overplaying your hand.

Exhibit A: Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who publicly declared that her department would not represent the Trump administration regarding its executive order placing a temporary moratorium on refugee arrivals from seven Middle Eastern countries.

As one would expect, the Trump administration wasted no time in giving Yates her walking papers. Liberals often have a pompous, holier-than-thou attitude that forces them to flout the law when they can't get their way or think their cause is so moral and righteous, it ought not be constrained. (See sanctuary cities, which break the law each and every day, often to the detriment of their own citizens.)

So another leftist -- this one a DOJ holdover from the Obama administration -- crashes and burns, utterly unaware of the fact she made a fool of herself. But with that being said, the administration has done a piss-poor job of A) rolling out this executive order; and B) effective messaging. From the get-go, the media and leftist agitators have controlled the narrative.

This is only a temporary order, and it pertains to seven countries the Obama administration had already cited as cause for concern and had implemented restrictions on travelers from those nations. If the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholds an earlier court ruling suspending the executive order (word may arrive late tonight), this will go to the Supreme Court.

I know I have casually brushed off the cries for Trump to be more deliberate, and supported the notion that an aggressive, hard-charging approach is what's needed to shake up corrupt and inept Washington, D.C. However, the whole immigration issue is multi-faceted and affects our economy, national security and millions of families. Temporary worker visas and green cards, among other factors, make this an issue that should have been thought through, with input from key officials, before Trump issued his executive order.

On the first Sunday after the order was issued, different administration spokespeople were saying different things about how the order would play out. It was a definite Keystone Kops scenario. Trump's visceral approach and desire to avoid lengthy deliberations are understandable, but the president needs to recognize that, if just a slight delay is needed before a policy is rolled out, it could prevent giving fodder to the media sharks in the water.

Much of what the media whines about is overblown, and its enthusiastic score-keeping on the number and particulars of Trump's "lies" (not all of them are lies) was nowhere to be seen when members of the Obama administration lied through their teeth day after day. But in this case, I actually cannot be too harsh on the media for criticizing a policy that, on its face, is entirely reasonable, but which suffered from a badly botched roll-out.